Called the "pitch deck," "sales deck" or, in some cases, just "the deck," a deck is a presentation prepared by a company or would-be venture, often given in the form of PowerPoint slides, that lays out to potential clients or investors a plan or vision of the company's resources and potential. Less bulky than a business plan and versatile enough to be emailed as a preview or expounded on in person, the deck is a concise visual calling card, so to speak, designed to open doors to opportunity.

Format

It's not the colors or imagery that counts in a deck, says technology media website TechCrunch, but the passion you convey. Nonetheless, for the sake of brevity, you should be looking at 10 to 15 slides and no more, with the slides serving as visual aids to the broader story. When presenting the slides in the deck, thought leadership consultancy The Bloom Group says there are four key principles to follow. First, be sure there is visual contrast to create dramatic tension; keep things tidy by aligning and spacing elements consistently; repeat key elements to tie together different parts of the presentation; and group related points and ideas in close proximity to one another.

Points To Cover

The Bloom Group suggests making the deck an opportunity to have a conversation with the client rather than feeding him a list of bullet points via monologue. To this end, it advises saving some of the extra detail for the reader script, rather than cramming everything onto the slides. A sample deck for the IT industry made by marketing training firm Pragmatic Marketing covers key areas such as trends, business challenges and complexities, your company's answer to those challenges, case studies and success stories, followed by "next steps," or "the ask," as TechCrunch calls it, where you spell out what you want.

Strategies

TechCrunch, which reviewed thousands of pitches by seed capital seekers, found that certain ingredients were useful in the eventual success of the deck. A succinct one-line description of the company helped pull the company's product and vision together, while accessibility of the deck via PDF and other media, rather than simply through slides, multiplied opportunities to get the proposition into more hands. The Bloom Group and TechCrunch both emphasize getting to know the needs of your audience and not simply making the deck about you, so postpone the sales deck until you have a full grasp of the other side's issues.

Different Audiences

A deck may be customized to suit a particular audience, rather than being a static boilerplate. Pragmatic Marketing suggests preparing "branch slides" for specific departments to elaborate on issues of specific importance to them. Give sales representatives the latitude to tilt the focus of the deck depending on whom they are addressing, so that decision-makers and buyers, for instance, get additional information on prices and return on investment than do users. For specific types of decks soliciting venture capital investors, you will need to cover 31 key figures, says start-up platform Technori, such as cash flow statements and the assumptions on which your financial forecasts are based.

About the Author

Timothea Xi has been writing business and finance articles since 2013. She has worked as an alternative investment adviser in Miami, specializing in managed futures. Xi has also worked as a stockbroker in New York City.